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Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

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Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#191

Post by csomar »

pavlov wrote: post #44

Facebook is a weird mass-market product because the average American tech industry pundit has very little visibility into how it’s actually used around the world. Take Facebook Watch. Ask a journalist or HN commenter, and they’ll tell you that it’s a content wasteland, a flop, a waste of investment. Here’s what Zuckerberg said about Watch on the earnings call: "There are now 400 million people who use it every month,…

> "There are now 400 million people who use it every month, and people spend on average over 20 minutes on Watch daily."

Duh. Facebook starts running the videos as soon as you open the Facebook page. If you open a video and watch it, it'll start a new one in 3-4 seconds. Unless they remove these practices, it is not clear how much of that 20 minutes is due to their aggressive behavior.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#192

Post by 52-6F-62 »

beezischillin wrote: post #149
ilovecaching wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been saying it forever. The media hates new forms of advertising because that was their missed opportunity. The media had gotten out of control regardless. They are about as factual and unbiased as a state run news organization at this point. Hopefully it will be possible to have reasonable discourse on HN again instead of the constant flaming.

There's proof of the media conglomerates not liking Facebook and doing everything in their power to stop them and similar companies, one just needs to look at the whole situation surrounding the EU copyright directive, Art. 11 and 13. The main reason it almost passed and threatened to screw with the state of the internet as we know it is because major German media conglomerates lobbied for it heavily to use it as a w…

I have to admit some confusion here.

Is it that the media companies are going broke because of FB and so they hate them, or is it media companies have vast amounts of capital at their disposal to try and bring them to ruin.

My understanding of media’s situation is quite different, and the downswing started occurring a longer time before FB came around.

First hand I can tell you that they don’t expect to take FB down and return to former glory.

Some are even looking at buyouts to return to more of a startup/reboot phase. Not a conspiracy to stick it to anyone else.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#193

Post by 52-6F-62 »

product50 wrote: post #129
m0zg wrote: post #60

I hope this will pierce the HN anti-FB bubble somewhat. It's dangerous to believe one's own BS. FB is here to stay, although I do believe it will wither in the long term (5+ years).

Thank you for calling this out. The best way to think about Facebook is that it is a time filler. I don't know where I read it but an average FB session lasts around 75-90 seconds. People use it when they are in a line or when they are in an elevator. It is a great way to stay in touch with what your friends are doing or communicate with them. I find it very difficult to understand what is to hate about that. Sure th…

The way people are so regularly sucked into tapping away on their phones is one of the reasons I don’t like it.

Haven’t used it in over 3 years, and I don’t miss it. It got to the point of why I was wondering why I’d sit there flicking through the news feed only to read about what someone’s aunt Joan was going on a racist rant about.

Instagram hasn’t been any better with the rise and incouragement of influencer culture.

They’re increasingly subversive in their tactics which is something I’ve always disliked in any company.

They get to a certain size and have to keep pushing for growth as they need to further maintain their growth rates to prove they’re still worth investment money.

Where does that end?

In a heavily diluted form they would both be fine, but the dark patterns in their designs are prevalent, in spite of what good they might have offered the world.

I don’t give Coca Cola a pass because their drink tastes good and can make people happy at times. They’ve cordoned off entire towns water supplies through shady dealings. Know what I mean?

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#194

Post by JustSomeNobody »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #142
saberience wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? Are you somehow suggesting Facebook shouldn't be able to know anything about me given the amount of data they've sucked up over the last decade? Given I first opened my Facebook account 10 years ago and I've been posting status update and liking various bands and TV shows, I would expect it to be able to have a fair guess of things I might like. It's recommending videos that aren't even in ENGLISH! I…

Wait, are we complaining that Facebook has too much information, or not enough? Seems like they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.

That doesn't sound like the argument at all. I read it as, given the vast amount of data they have, the initial suggestions should have been closer to what they might enjoy watching.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#195

Post by justtopost »

sveme wrote: post #160
pavlov wrote: post #44

Facebook is a weird mass-market product because the average American tech industry pundit has very little visibility into how it’s actually used around the world. Take Facebook Watch. Ask a journalist or HN commenter, and they’ll tell you that it’s a content wasteland, a flop, a waste of investment. Here’s what Zuckerberg said about Watch on the earnings call: "There are now 400 million people who use it every month,…

Have the 2.3 billion MAU been independently verified and checked for duplicates/triplicates etc? Considering the number of people in the world, the number of people older than 13 and younger than 75, the number of active internet users and the penetration in richer countries, I seriously doubt these numbers. Turns out, others are doubting it as well: https://mashable.com/article/report-claims-half-facebook-mau... So…

Because many of us profit by turning a blind eye. Most all companies fudge sub numbers for investors. It is fraud and should be treated that way.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#196

Post by nwellnhof »

zepearl wrote: post #9
chollida1 wrote: post #5

Pre: - still 30% off highs Numbers: - 4Q EPS $2.38, Est. $2.18 - 4Q Rev. $16.91B, Est. $16.39B - 4Q Mobile Ad Rev. as % Ad Rev. 93% - Mobile represents 93% of ad revenue. Mark doesn't get enough credit for his big switch to mobile, - Cost of revenue up 74 percent year over year - Operating costs went up by 60%, Note this is more than their growth rate, really the only concerning thing from a good quarter - Annual cap…

Do you think that this chart of historical DAU (Daily Active Users) is correct? https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebook-global-d... Looks too stable to me (especially taking into account the scandals). What's the definition of DAU anyway? E.g. if I used it on 2 days in a row, e.g. yesterday and today, and then do nothing, am I counted as a DAU or not for that quarter? Or maybe I have to be active for at l…

> What's the definition of DAU anyway?

AFAIK, you count the number unique users each day, and then compute the average over a period like a quarter. Media reports often make it sound like a DAU is someone who uses a service each and every day, but this is obviously wrong.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#197

Post by yoz-y »

randomsearch wrote: post #82
yoz-y wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people do love it. Not the company, of course, but many find the service it provides invaluable. Same goes to WeChat for example, I know quite some people who can't give it enough praise and it is arguably a worse offender than Facebook in all conceivable aspects.

What kind of things do they love about Facebook? I’d be interested to hear.

First thing that comes to mind is Facebook Events, people around me use it all the time to organise birthday parties, moving, weddings and whatnot. Multiple people said to me that they "no longer use facebook but still use Facebook Events because it is great". Another example would be Messenger, at least here it is the only place where really almost everybody is, Whatsapp had that place before but that is Facebook too. And really, since they removed the weird snapchat-like stories thing from Messenger it there is nothing wrong with it, had Facebook not been what it is, I'd probably like it too.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#198

Post by rtikulit »

cm2012 wrote: post #27
adpirz wrote: post #12

It’s hard not to look at this performance and take away from it that most people really don’t care about privacy. As upsetting as the thought may be to some, Mark’s hypothesis that privacy is no longer a social norm we value seems to be proven more and more right. Despite all the scandals and hearings, their DAU are more than the population of the largest countries on Earth. Short of serious legislation, what slows t…

Since there's no real life downside to FB using your data to show you more relevant ads, people are making the rational trade-off. Privacy issues with FB are ideology based in nature.

This isn't about ideology, it is about pragmatics. The accumulation and analysis of vast bodies of behavioural data by bad actors will inevitably lead them to develop and deploy increasingly indirect and long-term methods of subverting individual agency, to their own benefit.

How about subtle data-directed lobbying to cause subtle data-directed changes to the educational system to create subtle data-directed vulnerabilities to manipulation in adulthood?

There are plenty of examples in the real world, throughout history. It is going to get a whole lot worse, and it has the potential to never get better.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#199

Post by rtikulit »

chillacy wrote: post #122
felix_nagaand wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like how it's up to each individual to decide whether they want to be a heroin a addict.

If you attribute so little agency to people that becoming a heroin addict becomes someone else's responsibility (barring physical addiction in the womb or being shot up at gunpoint repeatedly) then there's little in this world that we can control anyways.

Your conclusion is entirely consistent with the facts. There is little in this world that we can control. It's really important to stop the bad actors from taking the little away from us.

Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach

#200

Post by TeMPOraL »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #142
saberience wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? Are you somehow suggesting Facebook shouldn't be able to know anything about me given the amount of data they've sucked up over the last decade? Given I first opened my Facebook account 10 years ago and I've been posting status update and liking various bands and TV shows, I would expect it to be able to have a fair guess of things I might like. It's recommending videos that aren't even in ENGLISH! I…

Wait, are we complaining that Facebook has too much information, or not enough? Seems like they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Both. They shouldn't have so much info, but since they do, then how come it's not used to make user-facing features work well?
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